from regs to resistance
diplomacy in an era of ALL CAPS
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I’m retiring (or pausing) “regs to riches” right now. I feel guilty and super strange that my subscribership is growing as I offer literally nothing new, so here’s a quick update:
In June, I left McMaster University to build the Canadian SHIELD Institute - a new think tank focussed on securing homegrown innovation, economic leadership, and defence. We’re squarely focussed on economic sovereignty. Building and restoring this across all corners of Canada is what consumes me now. It feels right to pour my energy here as we muddle through this trade war.
So I’m often writing in a different newsletter, and that’s SHIELD’s. The publication is (somewhat cheekily) called The National Interest, and you can subscribe to it here. Some of the top posts have been about agentic payments, stablecoins, and TikTok.
And I’ve still been writing for The Globe and Mail, and sometimes the Walrus magazine. Those are two other outlets where I’ve been writing about the economy and how we can make it more effective, less exploitative.
I’ve learned so much through “regs” and made some wonderful new friends. Thank you for reading, for whispering in my digital ear, and correcting me (every now and then). What an honour to learn from others, and think aloud and in the open.
As I officially pause this thing, here’s an essay I wrote after I read the new National Security Strategy from the Trump administration - a modern form of gunboat diplomacy I think I wrote it in a way that this outlet helped me hone.
Our generation tumbles forward amongst the strangest and most surreal [online] imagery. We constantly scroll by stills and short videos of vignettes that snapshot the irrational upending of the rules-based order as we knew it: innocent fishermen clinging to wreckage only to be blown up 45 minutes later, children separated by their parents by ICE, the East Wing of the White House being indiscriminately bulldozed, an AI-generated video of poop falling on protestors posted by the President (!) and the Minister of “War” hosting exercise workshops and clumsy parades are just a few. I mean, I’ve blocked out the “Ho Ho Home” meme from Homeland Security.
We are spectators as US trade decisions mess with our economy. And as our relationship to the US continues to contort, most of us just try really hard to go about our everyday lives. And that’s the same question for our political leaders: are we going to keep just watching all of this, or will we be more active participants in resisting Trump’s imposition on our sovereignty?
The latest humiliation that Canada has endured in the wild, disruptive and endlessly disorienting trade war is having our Prime Minister seated near President Trump during the FIFA World Cup Draw while he danced to the Village People after receiving a fake peace prize.
It’s like living in an alternative universe; a mad lib of the absurd. And that’s because the rules of our universe are being unilaterally rewritten by the United States of America. We first caught whiffs of the forthcoming trade war through an ALL CAPS post on Truth Social. Then, on “Liberation Day,” tariff levels were revealed on whiteboards that felt like ChatGPT suggested a tax for penguins, and just generally abandoning the collection and publication of key national statistics like jobs, GDP and inflation.
This is an unserious yet strangely savage administration, and yet Canada is in a strange diplomatic situation where we have to engage them with a straight face.
The latest confirmation of just how profoundly the US has switched gears when it comes to trade and foreign policy was published in the National Security Strategy. Defence expert Wesley Wark notes that it casts Canada as expendable.
Canada is barely mentioned in the document; framing our country as inconsequential. The strategy represents an overt and sweeping rejection of post-war “globalism” and free trade. It’s just as surreal as Trump’s fake video that showed Barack Obama being arrested.
Trump has vowed to reassert and enforce the Monroe doctrine, explicitly denying non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or “own or control strategically vital assets” to ensure US pre-eminence in the region. Further, the strategy treats industrial base rebuilding, energy dominance, critical minerals and control of key technology like AI, biotech, and quantum as core security goals, not just economic policy. The U.S. stresses that its treaty allies and partners add ~$35 trillion in economic power and must work with Washington to counter predatory practices. But it also insists allies must spend more on defence and adjust their trade policies to help rebalance China’s economy. Canada is named once in this context. It explicitly embraces “tariffs and reciprocal trade agreements as powerful tools” and insists that allies should no longer expect to earn income from the U.S. through “structural imbalances.” Ann Fitz-Gerald, a professor of international security, called it “a return to cold geopolitical transactionism.”
So far, Prime Minister Carney has done his best to play it cool with the Trump administration this year. You could even say he has been nice: making baseball quips from the Oval Office and joking when Trump called Carney the ‘President of Canada.’ Ha.
If anything, it’s been ironic to note that Canada’s ‘elbows’ are up when it comes to the influence of market forces here at home. Where we were once comfy with how corporate consolidation has come to characterize the country; telling ourselves that we needed to pick and nurture national champions in order to compete globally - we are now starting to take on more of an anti-monopoly agenda. Don’t forget - one of Prime Minister Trudeau’s last little policy acts was an Order in Council to cap NSF fees at banks. That was a provocative gesture that asserted the role of the state in moderating markets and making them more free and fair.
It’s so cool to call for more competition that the Bank of Canada is now doing it, too; albeit while staying focussed on federally-regulated industries instead of acknowledging the opportunity for the entire economy. And the One Canadian Economy stuff on internal trade is good groundwork to do more, faster, across the federation. It’s basically a warm-up drill, and now, we need to buckle up for battle.
While it has been encouraging to realize that we are visibly frustrated with corporate concentration here at home, we’re also perversely silent on Big Tech issues now in Canada; I’ve written that Budget 2025 sort of forgets about the Internet. It may be that anything Big Tech related is simply too sensitive in the trade war as the ‘Magnificent 7’ are all US companies. But that’s ironic and meme-worthy, too, because these are companies that (much like the Trump administration) EXPLICITLY want to DOMINATE us. Economist Paul Krugman called it a digital narco-state. So if not now, then when, exactly?
If monopolies were happening sort of by accident before in Canada, we should now expect subjugation by Big Tech and retaliation from the US. So is our primary adversary in the trade war President Trump, or Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla? It’s probably both.
We need to stand up for the economy (and economies) that we want, now. This could also mean building new alternatives here at home: like reimagining the adtech stack so our businesses aren’t renting access to their own customers, designing a unified digital ledger to future-proof how Canadians move money, and finally treating dual-use tech investments as strategic IP assets rather than accidental giveaways.
Budget 2025 doesn’t really acknowledge that we’re under attack by our neighbours. It’s an investment agenda that seeks to capitalize on strategic investments in Canada’s assets like natural resources, energy, critical minerals and clean-technology assets. And when it comes to defending ourselves, there are historic investments in defence and dual-use technologies. But we also need decisive public policy in order to defend ourselves from the new aggregation and predation of the US. A good offence is a good defence.
We can’t sit in the stands while Trump does the YMCA. Monopolization and dominance is now explicitly the US’ trade policy right now. That doesn’t mean Canada needs to dance to that tune. In fact, I can hear the Village People right now, asking Canada: “...I said young man, what do you want to be?”